Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@amphetamine@slime.global "It helps to pass the time until you die." -- Grandmother Sengir

But every time I lose something, I get a little colder and a little more comfortable with the layer of permafrost on me. It hurts. I can't open up like I used to. I used to find comfort in friends, in spiritual stuff, in identity dissolution, in kink stuff... and I just can't anymore. There's a crust of permanent anxiety there. And I can endure, like I do everything else. But I can't pretend I haven't done the same letting go process with my own self.

And I can't. I love him. Like I still love little Umbra and will always be sad when every little black shadow turned out not to be him, or when I see that damned catnip toy he loved sitting unslobbered on Peggy's altar. And like I will keep loving Peg even if she goes and dies on me or leaves. And like I still love Rik. And I still love Kristy and Jessie, damn their eyes.

And just as I was going through the not-necessarily-consensual process of doing what I had to do to deal, switching to "well it's just a stupid cat anyhow" instead of "this was my little buddy who curled up in my lap and yawned and pawed at me," I gotta face down losing the guy who practically raised me, who I ALREADY mourned last time he tried to shuffle off this mortal coil.

So it's kinda fucking hard to do the "hope for the best" thing. I don't really have a coping strategy other than obsessively looking at all the things that could go horribly wrong, steeling myself for them all at once, and keeping an emotional bug-out bag packed for the day when it all explodes.

And then that fucking cat got lost. Bam. And everybody said "oh, he'll wander back." Peg even cast spells for his safe return.

Nothing.

And then when I was still in recovery from that, and thought Kristy and Jessie were friends and we were slowly working out our differences... I decide to stand up for myself in a dispute and bam, it escalates, I have a scary self-destructive episode in front of them, it's all over. And then I find out there were problems for years that they never told me about.

I made my first boyfriend promise me we wouldn't do that to each other, during a really rough period where our house supposedly had bedbugs and we were stressing out at each other. But bam, it happened anyway, and I haven't really been the same since, I think.

I lost my dad suddenly, after his 2nd heart attack. My stepbrother's Stage 5 cancer came out of the blue, and then months later, he was gone out of the blue.

There were signs of problems with my two college girlfriends, but they both broke up with me out of what I thought at the time was the blue. One day fine, the next bam, gone.

The worst part of all this is the fact I can feel my emotions towards my stepdad pre-emptively closing off, on the assumption that he's doomed and if I start hoping for better I'll just be setting myself up for more hurt. It's just safer if I practice stopping caring now, and thinking of all the ways it's "fine, no, really, it's fine" if we lose him.

Note that this is while I'm still recovering from the loss of my kitten friend—which was relatively minor, but I was trying to convince my intrusive thoughts *wasn't* some lesson from the gods to prepare me for an impending loss.

Plus Peg seems to have aspirated a piece of bread a few days ago and is dragging her heels about seeing a doctor about the resulting cough, which is not drastically improving.

I am not in good shape right now.

Was just thinking "Huh, I haven't called home in a while, I should give them a ring" when my phone rang. Mom never calls unless it's an emergency.

Stepdad is in the hospital with a "minor" heart thing. He's awake and feels OK now and "his color is good," apparently, but they don't have an explanation for the chest pain yet. Probably a small attack.

I am used to any hopes I have in these situations being promptly dashed.

[disclaimer: the above satire does not include people who just vocally don't like, are squicked/uncomfortable with, and/or don't want to be exposed to a certain kink—there's PLENTY of stuff in the fandom I'd just as soon not be exposed to—I'm talking about crusading eradicationists here]

*writes a 50-tweet storm about how vore is insensitive to vegans and people in famine-stricken nations*

*posts on medium.com about Kaijus, Cultural Appropriation, And What The Macros Are Doing To Our Soil*

*takes the candy from a babyfur and pulls the visors off a few queer supervillain just for good measure, because what is context*

*quietly returns to putting alien mind-control helmets on catgirls, confident in moral rectitude and positive influence on the world*

Hmm. It's a boring day, I'm all restless and full of anxiety, and I've got nothing to do. What do the kids do these days when they feel like this?

Oh, neat. There's a kink I don't have. I think I'll dissect it for any semiotic content that remotely resembles a social ill, put it in a real-world context that doesn't apply to it, and then go on a months-long fanatical crusade to demonize it.

Surely this could never backfire and be applied to my own problematic interests!

@mmsword @SangriaSnake Uh, Zander, I dunno what the playgrounds were like in YOUR elementary school, but... :O

Coffee Science has elected for a mopey piano slowcore Sad-A-Thon.

Screw you, guys. I was just starting to like you. I still _do_, despite your shameful psionic assassination attempt, but I'm real glad I brought earbuds and a whole lot of Weird Al. 🖕

drgn wub bldg

I think I have finally found the Reddit equivalent of the Five-Finger Exploding Palm Technique. It is unstoppable. There is no countermove.

@Thaminga @Leucrotta Thank you both!

Hey, could anybody out there with Russian language background ( @Leucrotta?) help me out with a shenanigan?

Which would be a more correct Cyrillic transliteration: ок бумэр, ок бумр, or something else? I have some elderly "American" patriots to annoy over on Birdsite. O:)